Snuggle against your neighbour... (Finnair)

Member Name: Hoernchen123

Product:	Finnair
Date:	02/01/06 (2540 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: friendly staff, partly a modern fleet, i felt really safe

Disadvantages: a bit cramped

Last Wednesday I returned home from a short trip to Helsinki. We flew there, and naturally also back again, with the Finnair, the national carrier of Finland and around those is to be today in my review.

1. First of all...some general information

As said, Finnair is the national carrier of Finland. 60% the Finnair belong also to the state. The home airport is the airport Helsinki Vantaa and the IATA code, which one finds before the flight number of each Finnair flight, reads AY. Official name of the Finnair is today Finnair Oyj. in former times, at present their establishment in the year 1923 was called it still aero O/Y, since 1953 carries it only for the names Finnair. It is by the way the fifth-oldest airline of the world. The first flight went 1923 from Helsinki to Tallinn, at that time still with water airplanes in the summer and skids at the flier in the winter. Later Finnair had then normal airplanes and starting from 1947 flights with the first air hostesses.
Since 1999 Finnair is in the alliance OneWorld, as reaction on the fact that the arch-fiend in Scandinavia, which became Scandinavian airlines, joint founders of the StarAlliance.

1.1. The route network
Finnair flies mainly withhin the thinly populated Finland and also to many European cities.. Outside of Europe they fly to New York, Miami, Peking, Bangkok, Osaka, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo only.

1.2.The fleet

The airplane fleet of the Finnair appeared to me in Helsinki as terribly enormous, because Helsinki is the home airport of the Finnair and it landed and started constantly. Small one, large, medium sized, some with the old Finnair colors, the majority however with "new" painting, which they have now actually already since 2002. Those which have still the old colors are the smaller planes that fly within Finland.
Exactly taken the fleet contains the following airplanes:
6x MD-11, used on long-haul flight
5x airbus A321, flies within Finland and European
12x airbus A 320, still another airplane for short and "middle"-haul flight
10x airbus A319, for example on the way between Berlin Helsinki
12x MD-82 and MD 83, likewise in Europe on the way
9x ATR 72, flies within Finland and also to Tallinn, Estonia

To the age of the fleet is to be said that Finnair has both quite new planes, like the airbus A319, which is to a large extent just was build in 2000 but some planes ae also a bit older, above all the MDs. These airplanes however are maintained well, so this is no problem and therefore I would not mind flying with an older Finnair plane.

1.3. Safety

Safe is flying with the Finnair obviously also. In the last 40 years not one Finnair plane crashed and also otherwise there hardly were any occurrences, just two hijackings which ended bloodless.

1.4.The website


The web site of the airline can be found at www.finnair.com, from the welcome side you can just surf to website that is in the language of your country.
The websites for ever country are obviously well maintained and are frequently updated. An advantage of the German Finnair web page is that on-line reservations are booked in Germany (at the Finnair agency in Germany) and so you don´t have to pay the fee for using your creditcard abroad.


2.Why Finnair?

There are just a few airlines, which fly from Germany to Finland. Lufthansa, Scandinavian airlines, Sabena, Czech airlines, British Airways, air Botnia, Germanwings and Finnair offer flights after Helsinki. Lufthansa, Germanwings, Air Botnia and Finnair are the only one, which fly directly from Germany, without stopover and Finnair the only one were there, which fly directly from Berlin and showed also still reasonable prices, we these then booked :).

3.Booking

Finnair flights can be booked in any travel agency, in the Finnair offices at airports, via telephone or in the internet. We booked online since that offers you the opportunity to try out different dates and times, so you can find the lowest price.
Booking online was easy and after just a few minutes it was done. We got an automaticly written email, on the next morning a personally written email by the stuff of Finnair follewed-that really surprised me. The email just confirmed the online booking.

When you book online you get an e-ticket, so you have no paper ticket that could get lost or stolen. When you check in on the airport, you can do that on a check-in maschine or on the usual check-in desk. Instead of a ticket, you use your creditcard and ID when you show up.

On the website you can pay for the ticket only with a creditcard. They take almost every popular creditcard, in our case we used VISA.



4.The prices

Finnair is not a lowcost carrier and that becomes obvious when you look on the prices.
But we were lucky and paid just 190€ per person for the trip from Berlin to Helsinki and back. Only Germanwings would have been cheaper. The rate which we had booked, was the Happy Hour rate, these is the lowest Finnair fare and the offer it on every flight, it does not depend on the day of the week or the time. With the happy hour rate a oneway flight from Germany to Finland is 95€, if you also get the happy hour rate for the way back, you pay all in all 190€ (including all taxes). The next more expensive rate is the tourist rate, that is 165€ for a one way flight from Europe to Finland (or the other way around). And of course there are also more expensive rates. Its nice that you can see on the website of Finnair how their pricesystem works.

Sometimes Finnair also offers special rate which are extraordinary low. For example last year there was the "EU-Welcome Special" for flights to Tallinn, Estonia.

5. Check In
In Berlin-Tegel the check-in was not accomplished by Finnair but by the staff of the local airport company GlobeGround.There were also no check-in maschines from Finnair in Berlin.
In Helsinki it was different. There were many check-in maschines, but we decided to check in at the usual counter. A friendly, but elliptical man gave us our boarding passes and we gave him our suitcases. The landed safely with us in Berlin :-)




6.The most important...the flights...

Fairly late arrived the Airbus A319 with the registration OH-LVC Berlin and I was actually sure that our flight to Helsinki would be delatet. But after a very short stop we were allowed to enter the airplane. With such short stops the airlines save a lot of time and money.

Eventhrough the short stop the aircraft looked cleaned and in the seat pockets were an inflight magazin Blue wings, a safety card and an airsickness bag. The Finnair airsickness bags are bigger than the bags from other airlines.

We took a seat on the beautiful blue seats. The blue cloth covered all three seats together, making it look like a sofa with armrests in the middle. Because of the cloth it is not possible to remove the armrest, it can not disappear between backrests. The seats are also very cramped so you can snuggle against your neighbour. No, you have to snuggle against your neighbour ;-). Anyway the distance between your seat and the seat in front of you is quite big, so have much space for the legs.
The breadth of the seats is the same in the business class. I saw an air hostess who made something really funny before our departure. She put the typical business/economy class curtain one row forward. So I was sure that the seats in the business class are really the same. Funny was to see how a man who was sitting in the business class first (and looking like he was very proud off that) was sitting in the economy class after the airhostess moved the curtain...he became an economy class passenger without even moving...

Before we took of we looked on both floght the safety film in Finnish and English. Some of the most important things, like the advice that you have to fasten your seatbelt during take off was also told in German by a German speaking air hostess. On our flight home also the pilot tried to speak German, the made all announces in German, but it was easier to understand him when he spoke English ;-)


On the way to the runway with many airlines the small monitors disappear in the ceiling, that happens not on Finnair flight. No, now its getting exiting. Now you can see the runway under you and than the take off, lakes, forests and meadows...there is a camera in the airplanes belly :-)
Later on the monitor you can see a map that shows were you are and we were also shown a movie about Finland with English subtitles. Unfortunately there were no earphones, so it was a silent movie. But that did not really disturb me on the short flights which lasted just 1 ½ hour.

If you want to entertain yourself, take a look on the inflight magazine. It´s written in English and Finnish, in the middle you can find the catalogue of the inflgight shop (and also the duty free bordshop). You can buy most items in the plane, but you have to tell the staff that you want to buy something. They do not go through the plane, offering the items.

Even on short flights you get beverages and a warm meal. When it comes to beverages they offer almost everything, tea, coffee, sorf drinks, wine and much more, everything for free and as much as you like. Actually I had to resist not to get more coffee or wine...
The meal on the outward flight was just digusting. They offered hash browns with very spicy beans and small sausages. In addition a muffin that tasted like candy and a roll. On the flight back to Berlin the meal was a lot better, it was chicken with rice and carrotts, a roll and a small piece of cake. I took pictures of both meals.

Furthermore I took a picture of the nice Finnair bear in his natural enviroment. I bought him on the flight back to Berlin (I collect teddybears from airlines). In addition the air hostess gave me the little bear sitting next to the Finnairbear for free. That was really nice!

All in all the flight were calm, we even did not hat any turbulences. More than punctual the Airbus A319 OH-LVC brought us back to Berlin, we reached it 10 minutes earlyer than sceduled. Of course the landings were also shown on the little monitors :-)

=== conclusion===

Well, I believe, I have a new favourite airline;). The flights were very pleasant, punctual, I felt safe, the staff was very nice, they even gave me a small gift! The only thing that I criticise is the fact that the seats are so cramped that you have to snuggle against your neighbour...

Summary: The flights were very pleasant